START THINKING SOLDIER
Recruitment Campaign for the British Army
One of the stand-out pieces of work in my career to date, recognised with over 20 industry Awards and helping Skive to Agency of the Year. I've presented it to rooms full of Brigadiers, prospective clients and industry folk more times than I can remember.
My involvement in it was total - from winning it, defining it entirely from a blank canvas, and inspiring and imposing my vision for the project on a team of up to 22 people over nine months - from creatives and conceptors, to designers, developers, project managers, 3D modellers, and sound engineers. I'm not going to credit everyone here, but it was an enormous team effort, an example of multiple agencies and stakeholders working truly holistically, and I'm hugely proud of it.
Watch the video if you're not familiar with it already, and I've written about it in a lot more detail below to give you some idea of the scope.
Brief and Objectives
Every year the Army needs 300,000 enquirers from whom it needs to recruit 15,000 soldiers. Our brief was to increase recruitment among 17-21 year olds by creating a rich interactive experience at the heart of an integrated campaign - to give potential candidates an idea of what it was actually like to be in The Army – to 'Start Thinking Soldier'.
Research by the COI had shown that this age group is interested in self-discovery, and that they often don’t have the confidence to see themselves as soldiers. We needed to show them the variety of roles involved in the Army, and build their confidence up by allowing them the chance to ‘participate’ in soldiering scenarios, asking “What would YOU do?”
Given the target audience’s media consumption, it was clear that digital should be placed at the heart of the campaign. This gave us the opportunity to do something that no other recruitment campaign had done - to create the kind of experience our audience were used to in digital gaming.
The campaign was formed around four different missions, each one using ATL, BTL and Digital media. Each of the four missions began on TV and drove users online, featuring real soldiers in believable situations, and ended with a problem and a choice of different solutions for our audience to choose as they embarked on their own personal experience.
The missions reflected the key attributes the Army looks for in its candidates – Teamwork, Leadership, Fitness and Decision Making – which ultimately involved no less than 18 interactive challenges conveying the diverse job roles and career opportunities that a job in the Army offers.
Success for the campaign was 40,000 registrations, who would be invited by follow up DM to attend an offline event to learn more about the Army and talk to an advisor.
A year in the making
I ran the team of creatives, developers and technologists from Skive, with the invaluable support of Jim Hall, my ACD. I also worked incredibly closely with a creative team from Publicis Modem, director Michael Geoghagan from Spank, the senior team at Publicis responsible for the TV and Print, the COI Executive Producer Kim Knowlton and British Army advisor, Major Charlie Mayo.
There was enormous pressure up front to define the challenges (not games, challenges!) so that requirements could be integrated into the imminent three week location shoot in Kenya. This included any specific asset needs. In digital media, ‘assets’ normally implies things like imagery, fonts and style guides. Here, I was being asked if we needed to put a Challenger 2 tank in front of a green screen, or whether I required the construction of a Forward Operating Base.
I insisted on maintaining the integrity of the ‘first person soldier’s perspective’ that was going to be used in the TV ads, which in itself provided a whole host of obstacles to overcome. So that the experience through the story felt seamless, we used 3D Flash and the Unity plug-in with what ended up as 36 minutes of video, and stills footage.
On location in Kenya
The UK Shoot and Research
One glaring issue remained: a lack of knowledge of the Army.
The scenarios and challenges following on from each of the four ads were sense-checked by the COI for authenticity; they were then scripted and loosely storyboarded before any required scenes were filmed. Integral details such as user interaction, scripted voice over comms or finding out how exactly a Mortar Fire Controller goes about planning a mission were addressed after the shoot, with a series of extensive interviews, meetings and correspondence with real soldiers all over England.
It was with this invaluable collaboration with the COI that we shaped and defined the 18 pieces of content, spanning fire and manoeuvre, bomb disposal, Jackal driving and sniper fire to more tactical challenges such as mortar team placement and assess and deploy units after a natural disaster. The Army wanted to showcase what they called their 'Gucci gear' - the latest hardware and equipment - something else we had to factor in.
Research and Development in the UK
Results and Recognition
We got a fantastic 2.5 million visits from 1.7 million unique users - double the previous year - and over 31 million page views with an average 13 pages per visit. Average dwell time was incredibly just under 10 minutes.
We reached nearly 80,000 registered users against a target of 40,000. COI research conducted by Jigsaw showed of the registrants, 88% rated the site as excellent or very good, 57% told their friends about the site, and 37% intended to apply for an army career as a result of visiting the experience.
Most importantly, Army recruitment targets were met for the first time in 12 years.
Cleaning up on the Awards Circuit
